Grecian Formula Time

If you saw the newspaper Saturday, you may have noticed that I aged several years.

I’m used to the fact that I look old, but I wasn’t prepared for it in print. I felt like the bad guy who drank from the wrong cup in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Instead of becoming immortal, he found himself sprouting white hair, shriveling up to a skeleton and exploding.

It was kind of cool, but probably not for him.

What happened was that they were shooting promotional photos a couple of weeks ago for some of the blogs — at least I didn’t have to wear funny outfits, like poor Josh Drobnyk — and we decided to go ahead and take a new head shot for my column.

Ordinarily I would get some warning before they plugged it into the paper. Last time they switched photos, seven years ago, I wrote my column about it that day. I thought it softened the blow.

You might not think this is such a big deal, but it really is a bit traumatic, and not just for me. After all these years of looking at somebody three times a week in the paper, readers think they know what he looks like. Suddenly this old coot with a beard turns up in my space, and it’s unsettling. It’s like watching a Gilligan reunion show and discovering their little buddy is 80.

I went to the Allentown Farmers Market Saturday morning and stopped by one of my favorite food stands. I’ve been going there for years, but they had no idea I wrote for the paper. I’m known there as “Carolina,” because I wear a lot of University of North Carolina hats and jackets.

The lady who often serves me said she had seen a picture in the paper that morning that sort of looked like me.

“It is me,” I said.

“No, really,” she said. “I wish I had brought it with me so I could show you. It really does look like you.”

“It’s me,” I said.

“I wish I wouldn’t have left it at home. There's a remarkable ...”

“It’s ME!”

What made it all even more strange was that Monday morning, they used my old photo again. It probably looked like a pathetic attempt to hang onto my youth.

As it happens, I never liked that old picture anyway. It was the best of a bad lot from a grim photo session — I’m horribly unphotogenic — but it didn’t particularly look like me even when it was taken, and that manic grin was too much, especially when I was writing about something serious.

So when I got to work, I asked them to start using the new one beginning Wednesday. It's time.

Hey, we’ll get used to it. And I promise not to age a day for the next seven years.